Platinum Titans
by Darkmoon Eclipse
Summary: Months after Giratina's defeat, Cyrus tries again. This time, succeeding. Dialga and Palkia open a portal to what he believes is a clean slate, only to be been plopped down in Jump City with his Pokémon. Years later, someone from yet another world arrives. This is her story. (This story is the super cheesy trope about a fan thrust into the world of their fandom. Sorry; not sorry.)
1. Chapter 1

**This story is loosely based on a dream I had when I was 15 or 16 years old. **

** The hospital mentioned is a real place. I was a patient there when I had the dream.**

* * *

"You have everything?" my dad asks me as I climb into the passenger's seat.

"Yup," I answer.

"Alright," he starts the car. "Then let's go."

It's torrentially pouring rain on our way back to Larue Carter Hospital. Visibility is limited. My head is leaning against the passenger door window and I begin to daydream about Teen Titans. A car horn blares behind us and my dad complains how he can barely see the traffic lights in this weather.

We begin to make our turn. In the distance I see what I think are flashing lights. I first assume they are traffic lights gone out, but as we turn, I realize what they really are: police lights chasing another car. We are halfway through our turn and we are t-boned by the oncoming vehicle. My head goes through the passenger door window. I am in excruciating pain as glass slices my face and pierces my skin. I feel the rain on my face as I fall unconscious.

* * *

I awaken in a dimly lit hospital room. There is no IV drip, I am not hooked to anything. I look for the remote with the Nurse Call button, but I'm unable to find it. I throw my legs over the bed and climb out of it, only to collapse to the ground in a loud thud. _Okay, still too weak to walk. _I struggle to stand, but I cannot get a grip to pull myself up. Suddenly an alarm begins blaring and red lights start flashing. _Was this because of me?_ I crawl towards a chair and struggle in vain to pull myself up. The alarm shuts off and all goes quiet again.

I lie there on the floor and rub my legs in attempts to get feeling back in them. When I can finally stand, I go to the window and peek out the closed curtains. The outside world is bright, colorful, and … one dimensional, as if someone has drawn it. _What the heck? Perhaps this is a symptom of my injury?_ I return to the bed and stare at the ceiling.

"Check on the girl," a stern male voice says outside the door. "I planned on it," replied a soft-spoken female voice. I sit up in bed and watch as someone in a dark blue cloak walks in. "You're awake," she says as she lowers her hood.

My eyes grow wide. _No..._ "Now I _know_ I'm hallucinating," I mutter.

"If you're referring to your head injury," the girl says, "I can assure you, it's not bad enough to cause those."

"But you're..." my voice trails off and I silently mouth her name: _Raven_.

"You know of me?"

"From a cartoon..."

"Someone made a cartoon of me?"

"No. Well, yes. But..."

"But what?"

"You're not real."

"'Not real?'"

"The cartoon is based on a comic book." I hold my head in my hands. "You say this isn't from my head injury, but what else could it be? How else can this be explained?"

"I cannot say," she shakes her head.

I lie back down and sigh. "How'd you find me?"

"We were returning from a fight in the city and we found you unconscious outside the tower. Your clothes were wet, but not completely drenched. You didn't swim here. We were unable to figure out how you got here or why you were all wet."

"Aside from my head, did you find any other injuries?"

She shakes her head. "I did not. I mended the lacerations on your face and your head injury as best I could, but you need time to recuperate. Get some rest. I will bring you something to eat."

I sigh deeply and close my eyes in an attempt to get some sleep. My last thought before I fell asleep was _What happened to me?_


	2. Chapter 2

"Are you sure it wasn't just a glitch, dude?" Beast Boy asks Cyborg.

"_I_ programmed the system, BB," Cyborg answers. "It _doesn't_ glitch."

I am in the main room drinking a glass of orange juice while Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Robin are going through the security footage trying to find what triggered the alarm. Raven is meditating on the roof and Starfire is in her own room.

After asking, Raven informed me that I had nothing with me but the clothes on my back and the things in my pockets. No backpack, no purse, nothing but the small, ruined journal in my back pants pocket. Raven assured the rest of the Titans that I am not a threat, so I am free to stay in the tower until we figure out where to go from here.

"There!" Robin points at one of the monitors. "Rewind it and slow it down." For only a couple of frames, a shadow zips across the floor. "Is there anymore appearances of that shadow on any other footage?" They scan over all the security footage again and find nothing more. Just two frames of a nondescript shadow.

"That footage is from the entrance," Cyborg states.

Robin crosses his arms and asks, "Is it possible it's still here?"

Cyborg shrugs. "Maybe."

The alarm begins blaring again. Raven and Starfire rush in to find out what's wrong. Not far behind them, the shadow zips up the wall, across the ceiling, down the opposite wall, and disappears in the shadow under the couch...right under where I am sitting.

I panic and jump off the couch. Cyborg flips it. The shadow has disappeared again. "Where did it go?" They all look down at my feet. My own shadow is waving and weaving.

"Azarath Met..." Before Raven could finish, all goes dark.

* * *

It's cold. "Hello?!" I shout, but my voice gets swallowed up by the darkness.

When I am finally spit out, I find myself in what looks like someone's office. There's a desk at the end of the room with a chair facing the window. The shadow that brought be here zips across the floor towards the corner where there's something hanging from the ceiling. It growls, "Cro..." as it slowly opens up a set of wings. _It's a Crobat!_

"You aren't from around here," a man's voice says from behind the chair. "Neither am I." The chair turns around and I see who's sitting there: Cyrus of Team Galactic.

"You're not real," I murmur. I cradle my head in my hands. There is no headache, but I am still convinced that I am in some sort of fantasy world made up from a head injury. I don't care what Raven said. "You're not real."

Cyrus leans back in his chair. "Perhaps I'm not," he says. "Perhaps this whole world's not real." He stands up and walks over to me. "Or perhaps _you're_ the one who's not real."

I look up at him and just shake my head. "I don't know what real even is anymore." _First Teen Titans and now Pokémon. What's next? Elder Scrolls? Twisted Metal? Yu-gi-oh? Maybe even the KND?_

"Do you remember anything before you arrived here?" Cyrus asks me as he sits back in his chair.

I ponder for a moment and answer, "My dad was driving me somewhere in the pouring rain when our car was t-boned by a truck or something. I blacked out, then woke up here."

Cyrus, in his unbroken deadpan, then asks, "Where were you when this car crash occurred? More importantly, what was that world like? Describe it."

I cock my head to the side, wondering where he may be going with this… "The colors were darker and blended more naturally, the textures looked and felt more detailed, the right angles weren't entirely _right_ because curves and corners aren't made with picky human precision."

Cyrus, his tone still unchanging, asks, "And this world?"

I sigh. _For a hallucination, he's rather specific with his questions._ "The colors are brighter and they unnaturally contrast things in the fore- and backgrounds. The textures are too sharp, too smooth, or too flat. And the right angles are _always_ at perfect 90˚ because they _were_ made with picky human precision."

Cyrus rotates in his chair, now facing the window behind his desk, and states, "who's to say the second world you described, this one, is real, and first, your world, was actually the hallucination? Perhaps both of them are illusions and your mind is either falling deeper into psychosis, or you're slowly coming out of it. Perhaps there are more worlds out there, waiting for you to enter." He quickly rotates in his chair and looks at me. "Or perhaps your old world is my new one."

I step back and mutter, "That's all you ever wanted, wasn't it?"

"It is," Cyrus states. "A new world that I can make. One that I can rule."

I look back up at him and say, "I answered your questions, so it's only fair you answer mine." He leans back in his chair and motions for me to continue. "What were you doing before you got here?"

Cyrus says, "Your answer was simple, but ambiguous. Mine is complicated, but precise. I doubt you will understand it."

I glance at the Crobat in the corner, then back to him. "Try me."

Cyrus leans back in his chair and begins to explain. "I caught some creatures that had abilities that would be of use to me. Using their abilities, I created a red chain to summon, bind, and control two dragons. When they came, I was interrupted by the arrival of a third dragon. I was thrust into a world that was much stranger than this one. A child becalmed the beast and I escaped. After months of reexamining my plans, I tried again. I finally succeeded in creating my new world." He sighs. "Or so I thought. The dragons opened a portal and I was thrust through it. I found myself here. Alone. The dragons fled and I have found no way to leave this place." His sharp gaze fixates on me as he adds, "then you came."

Without missing a beat, I ask, "How long have you been here?"

For a moment, his face turns annoyed, then returns to its usual deadpan expression. "Ten years," he answers, "Ten. Long. Years."

I pause when I realize that that's roughly around Pokémon Platinum's release date. "What have you done in that time?"

Cyrus motions around him and says, "Rebuilding my life from scratch. There is no Sinnoh region here, so I found the next best place to start my story: Japan." I briefly chuckle to myself at that. "After that, I rebuilt Team Galactic here."

I eye him suspiciously. "How? All you have are your Pokémon and a false background."

"And an entire organization full of likeminded people," he replies in his usual deadpan tone.

"_Gullible_ people!" I shout at him. "You lied to the former Team Galactic, and you're likely lying to this one!"

Despite my outburst, Cyrus retains his composure. I take a deep breath to regain my own composure and ask my next question: "Have you met the Titans?"

"I have," he answered. He describes how not long after he was placed here, they came to investigate him. After a long and arduous time of persuasion and deception, he convinced them he wasn't a threat and was let go. He then spent the past ten years slowly rebuilding Team Galactic right under their nose. "Until today, I saw no reason to redraw their attention."

"About today," I ask him, "how'd you find out about me? And so quickly?"

He shakes his head and says, "When the dragons pushed me through the portal to here, I felt this odd sensation. It's hard to describe. Time has stopped and space was still. A moment of strong emotion, vast knowledge, and unwavering willpower flashed into my mind and was gone just as quickly. I haven't felt that for ten years." He stands up and slowly steps up to me, saying, "Until this morning. It came to me again. It was just as sharp and just as quick. I knew what that feeling meant." His gaze is still unnervingly sharp as he finishes, saying, "Another portal opened and I knew someone else entered this place through it."

I step back and consider all he's said. I think about how he described this sensation when going through the portal, and realize that I felt that too. Right before I blacked out after the car crash, I too felt exactly what he did. Almost. Something he said about the sensation was off, different, either a missing component or an added one. I can't quite pinpoint what, but I know what I felt was similar to, but not the same as, what he felt.

The composure I had is gone. I slowly back step into a wall and slide down to the floor. "These two dragons," I finally say after a few minutes of silence, "they were Dialga and Palkia, weren't they?"

Cyrus cocks an eyebrow, the only sign of emotion he freely shows, and answers, "I figured you may be familiar with my world. Your familiarity with this one is rather remarkable."

"How do you know about my familiarity with this place?"

Cyrus glances at the corner where the Crobat is hanging. The shadow on the floor wavers, then rises, taking shape, forming into a Gengar. The Crobat lets out an annoyed growl then Gengar glides away from it, its movement just as fluid as it was in shadow form. Cyrus looks back to me when I say, "you had a spy."

"You don't seem to be adverse to the sight of my Pokémon," Cyrus states. "When you entered my office and saw Crobat, you didn't panic. Instead you recognized it for what it was." He pulls two pokéballs out and returns Crobat and Gengar to them. "I had first believed you may have been from my world, but your story had me believing otherwise. You are not from this world nor mine, and yet you are still familiar with them. How?"

"Now _that's_ something you wouldn't understand," I say. "I told the Titans and they didn't understand either."

Cyrus, back in his chair, says, "In your words, 'try me.'"

I sigh deeply, collect my thoughts, and begin to explain, "You are a character from a video game called Pokémon, specifically Pokémon Platinum. What you described to me with what happened to you in the time leading up to you coming here was part of the storyline in said Pokémon Platinum: capture Azelf, Uxie, and Mesprit, create a red chain from them, summon and bind Palkia and Dialga, Giratina shows up, a kid defeats Giratina, your plan fails. All that happened after that wasn't in the game." I mutter to myself, adding, "Although I have always wondered what would've happened if you'd succeeded."

I look to Cyrus at his desk, his face still expressionless. He closes his eyes and considers the information I have given him. After a few moments of silence, he replies with, "Makes as much sense as everything else that's happened." He rotates in his chair and faces the window. He motions with his hand towards the door and says, "You're free to go."

I stand up and say, "So that's it then? You have your Gengar bring me here, we exchange information, _which frankly gives me lots more questions and no answers_, and then you just tell me to leave?"

His chair still facing the window, Cyrus answers, "I can always return you the same way you came," as his Gengar reappears next to him.

My breath catches in my throat. I mumble about using the door and walk out.


End file.
